Ditto

I'm still debating about whether or not to blog today...

You see, today was almost identical to yesterday, bug-wise. It was warmer, by a little, and the first sunny day since... I don't remember when, and sunny days have a tendency to bring out the bugs, but not so much today. Mostly it was the same things as yesterday.

Winter crane flies:

 Mostly flying around on their own. One small swarm. Only this one landed so I could get a picture.

And ants. There were more of them today:

I also saw what I think was a rove beetle, but it did not stick around to have its picture taken.

Sweet

I didn't do a bug walk today because the temperature was in the 30s (39ºF. But hey, 30s is 30s), and because it was doing a drizzle/flurry combo that was not good for my camera, but I did walk around a little bit after I went out to get the mail, to see what was out there. And I did find something mildly interesting...

 This tree has a row of newly-made holes in it (woodpecker's work), and sap is running out of the holes, and the sap has attracted ants. It was a big surprise to me to see a dozen or so ants on the tree, feeding on the sap (which is basically a kind of sugar water, obviously attractive to ants). After all, it's COLD out. And there have not been a lot of ants around lately, maybe I'll see one or two when it's about 15ºF warmer than this. What I want to know is, if the ants are in their nest underground somewhere (which is where I assume they have been hanging out), how did they even know that there was all this sap running on this tree?

Bug Quest

Among my other non-bug related interests is reading. I love to read, as you may have guessed from the occasional literary references in this blog. One thing that happens when you read a lot is that you see the patterns of stories; there are themes and plots that recur in a lot of tales. Yesterday and today the same thing happened to me on my bug walks, and I was thinking today that it's like I am in a fairy tale, one about some kind of quest, and there were magical enchantments that tried to keep me from continuing on to find my goal. All of which is to say that both yesterday and today it started to rain during my bug walk, and both days it happened when I reached about the same point. Like there was some sort of enchantment trying to keep me from seeing something on the other side of the backyard. Yesterday I gave up and went in the house, even though I hadn't even gotten any pictures (except a couple of blurry ones of a spider, which is why there was no blog yesterday). Today I pushed on, holding my camera under my sweatshirt. It started to rain harder, so I had to head back to the house, but on the way there, the rain stopped, so I turned around to continue the walk. So it started to rain again. Something really didn't want me to see that side of the backyard. I persevered, though, and that is where I found today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is some kind of wasp. It was definitely a surprise to see this walking up the trunk of a tree on an overcast, rainy, mid-40s day in late November.

The puddle pond was bigger today than it has been on any day the last couple of weeks. The pattern now is for it to rain pretty heavily every couple of days, and the pond will last a day or two, and then seep into the ground. So, one day there's a pond, the next day it's gone, and then the next day it comes back. Yesterday there was no pond, and today there was a bigger one that before. Usually this pond only appears in the spring (I usually refer to it as my vernal pond) as snow is melting and the ground is still pretty frozen. The ground is not frozen now, but it must be really saturated for this puddle to be appearing today after only an inch and a half of rain. Much of the backyard was pretty squishy. But we have had more than twice the normal amount of rain so far this month, and we have more than a foot extra for the year so far. Meanwhile, the springtails are out in great numbers, drifting on the surface of the pond in groups:

And there's another little thing there, too, which could be a very young snowflea, but I can't really tell. Also, there are two groups of springtails in this picture; the blur toward the top is one, too.

It could be something else, but I don't know what.

A couple of tiny ones were seen, too.

See the other group in the upper left?

Cocoon on the side of the house

House Guest

Bugs try to avoid the inevitability of winter sometimes by finding a way into the lovely coziness of the indoors. I am not sure how they get in here, but they do. Late last night I saw one of these little intruders walking across the living room floor, and now it is Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Click beetle. It looks dead, but it was moving. Beetles often pretend to be dead as a means of self-defense. I am not sure how that keeps other things from eating you, but beetles exist, so it must. I hated to do it, but I put it outside. I don't think it would survive the winter in the house, because I don't think it would find food.

The big surprise when I went outside was finding a beetle out there, too.

I found the outdoor beetle on the stile, and that is also where I found:

 an ant...

 ... and some springtails.

When I crossed the stile I realized that the inch and a half of rain we got last night had filled up my puddle pond again, and there were springtails on the surface of the water:

 A raft of springtails. I am not sure if they did this on purpose, or if the breeze pushed them together. Note one is riding on the back of another.

 It was only when I looked at the pictures on the computer that I spotted a baby (nymph?) one–on the left side of the photo. Springtails are tiny. I am not sure I would have been able to see that with my naked eyes, and I just didn't notice it through the camera. It was an awkward photography situation.

And there was more than one species of springtail. The Oblong one (also a young one) is a snowflea, which is, obviously not a flea really, but a species of springtail that will sometimes be seen (in huge masses) on snow.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Fluctuations

I was out in front of my house today, taking a picture of a spider, when my neighbor called out to me, "You're crazy!" as she walked by. She was not talking about the fact that I was taking a picture of a spider. She was talking about the fact that I was outside in a t-shirt with no jacket. She was taking her daily walk, and bundled up pretty well. And while today's kind of weather would have felt arctic a couple of months ago, it felt downright pleasant compared to the last couple of days, and I have lost all perspective of what cold is.

The deep freeze was too much for the chrysanthemums:

 Sorry, pollinators. Actually, I think the weather this last week was probably not so great for them, either.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

 Crane flies

 I'm not sure, but I think the higher one is the female.

 Different one, different tree, but I think this is a female, too. See the ovipositor on her back end, that looks like a stinger?

There were no pollinators on the dead chrysanthemums, but there were spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Bowl and doily spider, I think.

Cozy Spider

BLOG POST FOR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2018 (I lost track of time while the picture was loading and posted late).

I know I said there would be no post today, but I found something to take a picture of, so here we are. It was as cold as expected, possibly colder, but what I found was not outside. At this point I should mention that what I found was a spider, so if you don't like spiders, leave now.

For everyone else, Arachnid Appreciation:
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Jumping spider crawling around on the window–on the INSIDE.

Winter Insects

The purpose of today's post is purely documentary. There were bugs in my backyard today (Okay, there are ALWAYS bugs in the backyard. Specifically, I SAW bugs in my backyard today), so I am posting them because it shows that on this day, I found bugs. There was no blog yesterday because it rained during the time I had available to go out and look; there will be no blog tomorrow because the high is only supposed to be in the 20s, and there won't be any bugs, and I don't want to go out to look for them. After that... we'll see. It's getting pretty wintery around here.

And, the bugs I saw today were "winter" bugs. Winter crane flies, of which I saw a few, got pictures of none, and winter fireflies:

But there were a couple of summer holdouts:

 Lady beetle

Bottle fly

Arachnid Appreciation:
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The spider that lives under the rain gauge was active enough to be annoyed when I lifted the roof off of its home to empty yesterday's rain out of it.

Free Ants

Most of the snow had melted by the afternoon and I spent some time looking out the window at the birds that were feeding on the lawn. Ironically, it was mostly snowbirds (aka juncos). I don't know if it was seeds or bugs they were after, but there were a lot of birds that seemed happy that the snow was gone. It was also warm out, so I was expecting to find a decent number of bugs, but I was wrong; there were very few bugs around. What is interesting, though, is that about half the bugs I saw were ants, one crawling on the leaf litter, and few crawling on tree trunks. My guess is that they were under the snow, and now that the snow is gone (for now), they were free to crawl out and go about their ant business again.

A weird thing happened today. The weather forecast said there was a 50% chance of rain, and it didn't rain! That's so strange! (Sarcasm. Because it always rains lately. And to give the weather its due, it did at least LOOK like it was about to rain all day. Anyway, we're expecting rain and/or snow tomorrow). Bugs were scarce. I saw a couple of winter crane flies:

 This was the only one (of 3) that wasn't flying, so it's the one I was able to photograph.

 And this winter firefly is still in its bark crevice, but it keeps getting deeper and deeper. I can't help but notice that from this vantage point it looks like a sunflower seed. I find sunflower seeds stuck into the bark of trees sometimes; I have read that chickadees stash food that way, and maybe other birds do, too, so I wonder if any birds ever think they're pulling a sunflower seed out of a crack in tree bark and it turns out to be a winter firefly.

 I found a twice-stabbed ladybeetle in almost this same spot on this tree about a week ago (when the temperature was below freezing). I wonder if this is the same one.

I didn't do a blog post yesterday because I didn't exactly do a bug walk. I didn't have a lot of time free for it, so I walked around parts of the backyard when I got home at one point in the morning, and said if I found any bugs at all I would go inside for my camera. I didn't find any bugs. So... no pictures, no blog.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Spiderling

Tiny spiders are definitely in this time of year.

It's Still Snowy Here

Today was another day when I knew there were bugs active in the backyard before even going outside because a fly landed on the window. It was almost 50ºF out, so it made sense. The first thing I did when I went out, which has become my habit, was to check if anything was on the chrysanthemums. I didn't find any bugs there, and instead I found that many of the flowers had been chomped, probably by deer (and there was a lot of OTHER evidence that deer were all over my backyard last night, if you know what I mean. And I am not talking about footprints in the snow). As it turned out, there were not as many bugs as I was expecting to find. Yes, most of the ground is still covered with the snow that the meteorologists said would be washed away by the rain the day after it fell. But I was expecting a few more bugs anyway.

However, for the first time in a few days, I have a Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think it's a stonefly.

 Sorry, I thought I got better pictures. It was very low to the ground, and it was hard for me to get close enough because of my bad knee. I hate apologizing for bad pictures. I hate even taking bad pictures. Just ignore this whole paragraph. Except for this next part... This was the first bug I saw on my bug walk, and I thought it was an ant. I had to decide if I wanted to take its picture or not and here's the basic thought process: an ant isn't very interesting, and it's hard to get pictures of them when they're moving (which this was), but it could be the only bug I see, and I should record that I saw an ant, given the weather lately, and the snow on the ground, but it's so low to the ground, I don't think I can get a good picture anyway, but I might not find any other bugs...
After that I leaned in for a closer look, and realized it wasn't an ant anyway, so, I went for the pictures.

I mentioned a few days ago after we got all that rain in one afternoon that I suddenly had a pond in my backyard. It covered one of my paths, and was about 10 feet long and about 8 feet wide. I think it was about 6 inches deep in the middle. It appeared on Tuesday, had diminished to a deep puddle by Wednesday, and was gone on Thursday... until it snowed/sleeted/rained on Thursday night. Friday it was a pond of slush, and today it was water again, not quite as big a pond as it was on Tuesday. And today, I was able to find ONE springtail on the surface:

 There may have been more, and probably were, but spotting them has a lot to do with my position relative to the angle of the sunlight on the water. This is a tiny thing. Anyway, given how leaky my boots are, I could only really get close enough to take pictures of anything very close to the edge of the puddle.

There was a tiny swarm of winter crane flies at the base of a tree (which is usually where I find swarms of winter crane flies, and I have not yet found out why):

 When they are flying it is hard to tell swarms of winter crane flies from swarms of March flies (except that the crane flies are nearly always near the base of a tree, but the March flies can be, too), but you can usually tell from the pictures if you get the right moment. And when I say it was a tiny swarm, I mean there were 3 insects in this swarm. Any less than that and I don't think you could call it a swarm. I am going to post a few pictures, and you can see if you can spot any of the insects in them.

 

 Gnat. And that's that.